108 Chapter 5peoples. On May 25, 1929, Arsenev was commissioned by the Dalkrai lead-
ership to produce a demographic survey/analy sis titled “Population of the
Vladivostok okrug,” which appears as Map 2.^118
In February 1929, a RFE leader named Tishkin gave a long published
report at the 4th Regional (Okrugnaia) CP Conference on the state of Soviet
cultural work among Easterners. He stated that bourgeois culture towards
natsmen was strongly chauvinistic: “We should cut out to the core all national
chauvinistic tendencies.” However, he also noted that the Soviet Union was
beginning to win the trust of Easterners and Sovietize them as well:^119
“We need them to see these Soviet institutions as their institutions, that
these serve them. They can go to these institutions without any prob lem and
speak to them. All these institutions should be available for any national-
it y.”^120 However, the calculus of the socialist construction of Koreans and
Chinese as Soviet men was counterbalanced by the fear that these commu-
nities were possibly vectors for reverse piedmonts.
Unfortunately, the state rarely acknowledged that across the border in
Manchuria lay the greatest potential for an anti- Soviet reverse piedmont—
namely, the Rus sians of Manchuria, of whom, in 1922, there were approxi-
mately 120,000. The po liti cal factions of Manchurian Rus sians consisted of
a plethora of White factions and others (Kappelites, Fascists, Merkulovtsy
Kolchakovtsy, Greens, SRs, and Monarchists), the vast majority of whom
were anti- Soviet.^121 Many of the ex- Whites formed military units in Man-
churia with the stated goal of overthrowing the Bolsheviks. In 1929, the
Soviet Union fought a brief three- month war (July through September) over
the Chinese Eastern Railway with China. This was known as the Sino-
Soviet War of 1929. Overlooked is the fact that some Soviet Koreans par-
ticipated in the Manchurian campaign as part of the Red Army.^122 Kim Pen
Khva (one of the Korean Red Partisans leaders discussed in Chapter 3) was
a Red Army lieutenant in the 76th Riflemen’s regiment during this conflict
(see Figure 7). Kim’s regiment belonged to the ODVA, the Special Far
Eastern Army (the ODVA became the OKDVA in 1930).
Kim’s participation in this war was extensive, because after the war
had formally terminated on September 9, 1929, his regiment (also called the
76th Karelskii regiment) still had to secure CER (China Eastern Railway)
positions against the Chinese warlord Chang Hsueh- Liang. Apparently,
the warlord Chang fought against the Red Army using defensive guerrilla
tactics. Thus, Kim and his platoon had to lie in wait for hours under camou-
flage and brush for Chang’s troops. Kim recalled having to fight in close
quarters and that, sometimes, the first strike against the Chinese soldiers
was with a bayonet thrust.^123 The Red Army fought against Chang at vari ous
strategic railway points near Mishan, Fukdin, and Manchouli in Manchuria